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To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

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Thailand beach murders: A flawed and muddled investigation

From the moment their bodies were discovered on a Thai beach on 15 September last year, the investigation into the deaths of British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller has been a muddled affair.

Information from the police has been hazy, contradictory and sparse.

Miss Witheridge, 23, from Norfolk, and 24-year-old Mr Miller, from Jersey, were found bludgeoned to death on the southern island of Koh Tao.

The first officers on the scene were local police with rudimentary training and apparently no idea how to seal off a crime scene, with tourists wandering through it for days afterwards.

Thailand's best-known forensic scientist, Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand, whose institute was not allowed any involvement in the investigation, testified at the trial that the crime scene had been poorly managed and evidence improperly collected.

Instead of limiting their comments to what they knew about the crime, the Thai police threw out a barrage of speculation about who the culprit might be. It could not have been a Thai, they said at first, and focused their efforts on the Burmese migrant worker community.

At one point they highlighted a British friend of Mr Miller as a possible suspect, then just as quickly dropped him. The initial team of investigators hinted they were looking at someone from a powerful family on Koh Tao. Then their commander was abruptly transferred and all official talk of this family's involvement was dropped.

Other flaws were exposed once the trial started in July, including the police's failure to test Miss Witheridge's clothes or the alleged murder weapon, a blood-stained hoe, for DNA.

A year later Dr Pornthip tested the hoe and found the DNA of two people on the handle, but none matched the defendants.

The court heard several CCTV cameras near the crime scene were not working and cameras by the pier were not inspected to see whether anyone had fled by boat after the crime.

Both defendants have also testified they were beaten and threatened into making confessions. No lawyers were present during the sessions and translators were of dubious reliability.

These factors raised serious questions over the integrity of the prosecution case. The most important question though, hung over one piece of evidence which did tie the defendants to the crime: the alleged match between their DNA, and that recovered from semen found on Miss Witheridge's body.

Less than three days after the crime, police announced they had extracted the DNA profiles of two men from the semen. They also said these matched DNA found on a cigarette butt near the scene.

In court, a police officer testified those samples were received on the morning of 17 September and started DNA extraction at 08:00 local time. This seems unlikely as the pathologist only started his autopsy at 11:00. The successful profiling of two men was announced at around 22:00.

It suggests remarkably rapid analysis, in less than 12 hours, from samples in which at least three people's DNA - the victim and the two men - were mixed.

The DNA profiles were used to match cheek swabs taken from the two Burmese defendants after they were detained on 2 October.

Jane Taupin, a renowned Australian forensic scientist brought in by the defence team, questioned the plausibility of working this quickly, saying extracting DNA from mixed samples was difficult and time-consuming.

Ms Taupin was not allowed to testify, one of several inexplicable decisions by the defence, but she highlighted several important aspects of DNA testing which neither the defence team, the police, nor the judges appeared to understand.

"The case files of the Thai forensic lab should have been provided to the defence," Ms Taupin said.

"This is so the scientific data contained within, and used to provide conclusions, could be examined for a scientific review.

"The essence of scientific method is the testing and review of hypotheses. If these are not viewed, or even stated, then this does not inspire confidence in the scientific analysis.

"A one-page table with alterations is not a suitable document to provide to a court. A report should not have alterations, especially handwritten ones, with no explanation as to why they were altered."

Myanmar migrants Win Zaw Htun, (R), and Zaw Lin, (L), both 22.

There were other problems too. The date of the original DNA analysis was said to have been 17 September, but the report submitted to court was dated 5 October. This was two days after the police had announced a positive match with the two Burmese defendants. That unexplained discrepancy inevitably raises suspicion that perhaps the result was manipulated.

These weaknesses in the prosecution case should have given the defence a field day in court, but they were not raised until the closing statement.

The two police forensic witnesses were not cross-examined over the doubtful timings nor the scrappy and incomplete DNA documentation.

Had Ms Taupin been called, she could have exposed these flaws. Instead, she had to sit in the lawyers' room, largely ignored, and then fly home without testifying. Whatever views the three judges formed of the quality of the prosecution's evidence, it was never properly challenged in court.

I have asked one of the defence lawyers about their bafflingly non-adversarial tactics. He did not offer a convincing explanation.

Perhaps they were nervous of being seen to take too much advice from a foreigner, for fear they would lose sympathy from the judges.

Everyone in that court was aware how much Thailand's reputation was on the line, and discrediting the police in such a public way might have felt like a dangerous step to take. We just don't know.

This remains one of a number of frustrating unknowns about this murder case. These can only have added to the suffering of the victims' families.

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Organizers of an anti-death penalty coalition say they have delivered over 56,000 petition signatures to New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, urging him to sign a bill to repeal the state’s capital punishment law.
Sununu has vowed to veto the bill, saying he stands with crime victims and members of the law enforcement community.
Before presenting the signatures, the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty held a news conference Thursday where family members of murder victims spoke in favor of repealing the death penalty.
The bill was passed by the House and Senate.
It is unclear whether they have a two-thirds majority of votes in both chambers, which is needed to override vetoes. Source: The Associated Press, May 17, 2018

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

The high school junior accused of gunning down 10 students and teachers at a Santa Fe school is facing a capital murder charge - but he’ll never face the death penalty, even in Texas.
Though Dimitrios Pagourtzis was charged as an adult and jailed without bond, even if he’s found guilty he can’t be sentenced to death because of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. And in the Lone Star State, he can’t be sentenced to life without parole as the result of a 2013 law that banned the practice for minors.
“In Texas, after the Supreme Court’s decision, they passed a law that basically says that it’s a life sentence if you’re under 18 at the time of the crime,” said attorney Amanda Marzullo, executive director of Texas Defender Services. “The Court has said that it is cruel and unusual to execute an individual who is under 18 at the time of the offense.”
The Santa Fe High School student admitted to the mass shooting that killed 10 and wounded 10 others early Friday, according to court documents.…

31 years ago, on May 20, 1987, just before midnight, I was sitting in the witness area of the Mississippi Gas Chamber watching someone die in front of me. His name was Edward Earl Johnson.
I am both sad and glad that Edward’s final two weeks, right up to his agonising death, were recorded in Paul Hamann’s extraordinary BBC documentary Fourteen Days in May. Sad, because from time to time I find myself forced to relive that horror, when I watch the film at some public event; glad, because at least Edward’s senseless death has had positive repercussions – the film inspiring many to take up the battle for people in his precarious predicament.
Yet it irks me beyond measure that people who should know better use their position of power to prognosticate that the justice system never executes the innocent. For example, in a case called Kansas v. March, in 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia loudly proclaimed that there is not “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a…

How much does the public have a right to know about how the state of Indiana executes people?
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"If we win ... the Indiana public will know more about one of the most consequential areas of decision making that the state of Indiana engages in," attorney Peter Racher said in an interview.
The state, however, sees it as contrary to a state law limiting what the public can see pertaining to executions. The law was controversial because of how it passed. After midnight on the final day of the 2017 legislative session, it was added to a budget bill, two pages out of 175.
"The budget is now a death penalty bill," Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, said at the time. "There's been no public…

(CNN) - An Australian woman has been sentenced to death by hanging after a Malaysian court overturned an earlier acquittal of drug smuggling charges.
According to CNN affiliate Sky News, a three-judge panel unanimously threw out the previous ruling in 54-year-old Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto's case.
The grandmother and mother of four was arrested in December 2014 while transiting through the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on a flight from Shanghai to Melbourne, according to another CNN affiliate, SBS News.
She was found in possession of 1.1 kilos (2.4 lb) of crystal methamphetamine and faced a mandatory death penalty under Malaysia's draconian drugs laws.
Exposto claimed she had no knowledge of the drugs in her bag and had been scammed by a boyfriend she met online.
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The lawyers fighting the death penalty ordered for a former Northmont High School student want the Ohio Supreme Court to reconsider its affirmation of the sentence and scheduling of the execution.
Austin Myers' lawyers said in a motion filed this morning that they want the state's highest court to overturn the conviction and call a new trial "or in the alternative that his sentence be modified to life without parole."
Myers, 23, is still apparently the 2nd youngest on Ohio's death row 3 1/2 years after being sentenced for the murder of childhood friend Justin Back, 18, of Wayne Twp., Warren County.
Last Thursday, the court affirmed the death penalty for Myers, for the stabbing death of Back at his home outside Waynesville in January 2014.
The execution was scheduled for July 20, 2022 in the decision.
Warren County prosecutor David Fornshell was pleased with the 7-0 ruling by the state's highest court.
"The 7-0 decision is always something you like to se…

Defendant claims firefighters didn't try hard enough to extinguish blaze
The nanny responsible for killing 4 members of a family in an arson appeared in court in eastern China on Thursday to appeal her death sentence.
Mo Huanjing, nanny of the family of Lin Shengbin, pleaded guilty to starting the fire. But she said during the appeal at Zhejiang High People's Court that "the penalty in the original ruling was extremely heavy".
"The tragedy wasn't the result I wanted to see," she added. She said the efforts of firefighters were flawed. And she confessed to her offense during the initial interrogation, which could be regarded as a reason to earn a more lenient sentence.
Wu Pengbin, her lawyer, told China Daily that some firefighters and employees of the property management department of Lin's apartment attended the hearing as witnesses at his urging.
"I wanted them to show what they were doing at the time to the court, as I, with my client, thoug…

To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

Concerns about Texas' dwindling lethal injection supplies coupled with questions about the age of the drugs have some advocates wondering whether the state is prepared to humanely carry out its recent uptick in scheduled executions.
Texas currently has 8 death dates and 9 doses of its execution drug - compounded sodium pentobarbital - for use in the Huntsville death chamber. What's more, a string of contradictory records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice raises questions about whether some of those doses could be 3 years old, far older than previously reported and old enough that experts worry it could increase the chances of a "torturous" execution.
"The older the drug the greater the likelihood of a botched execution. Period," said Maurie Levin, a death penalty lawyer with experience in lethal injection litigation. "It becomes contaminated, corrupted, impotent, and all of those things can lead to a torturous execution."
In response …

Texas executed Juan Castillo, who said he was innocent, for 2003 San Antonio murder
A Texas death row inmate was executed Wednesday — his 4th execution date in a year. Though advocates and his attorneys insisted on Juan Castillo's innocence, he lost all his fights in court and was put to death for a 2003 San Antonio murder.
Juan Castillo was put to death Wednesday evening, ending his death sentence on his 4th execution date within the year.
The 37-year-old was executed for the 2003 robbery and murder of Tommy Garcia Jr. in San Antonio.
The execution had been postponed three times since last May, including a rescheduling because of Hurricane Harvey.
Castillo's advocates and attorneys had insisted on his innocence in Garcia’s murder, pleading unsuccessfully for a last-minute 30-day stay of execution from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott after all of his appeals were rejected in the courts.
The Texas Defender Service, a capital defense group who had recently picked up Castillo’s cas…

DPN opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner. The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, an archaic punishment that is incompatible with human dignity. To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class. It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. Death Penalty News is a privately owned, non-profit organization. It is based in Paris, France.Your donations to Death Penalty News DO make a difference.